IT formed the backdrop for an award-winning film set in rural Wales that counts Hollywood stars among its fans.

Gideon Koppel’s debut film Sleep Furiously chronicled the changing life and landscape of a small farming community near Aberystwyth.

But while the film triumphed over big-budget blockbusters to win an international film award, its subject, the community itself is facing its own very real battle to survive.

Villagers in Trefeurig are involved in a race against time to save the village school building for community use.

Campaigners fighting to save it say that in the absence of a pub, a post office and a school, the building is now the keystone to sustaining rural community life.

Sleep Furiously, which has been praised by Hollywood actor John Malkovich, centres on the monthly visits of a mobile library van which travels from farm to farm collecting and delivering books.

“It tells a number of different stories about the community and its inhabitants as their world changes, and as tradition and certainty ebbs from their lives,” said campaigner Marian Gray.

The community now fears the school, which closed to pupils in 2007, will be sold off to private ownership unless they can buy it.

As part of the fundraising drive to meet a target of more than £130,000, a sleep-over event is being held at The Big Sleep Hotel – part-owned by Malkovich – in Cardiff on Friday .

“Those taking part will have the chance to see the award-winning film and learn about how important it is to preserve these endangered rural communities,” Mrs Gray said.

“Even though it has closed as a school in 2007, the building is still the hub of community activity.”

A lack of public transport in the isolated village makes the school especially important.

The film, set 50 miles north of the Dylan Thomas’ fictional village, Llareggub, documents the community’s previous struggle to retain the school at the heart of the village.

“It represented a modern world where cold financial decisions can ring the death knell for community traditions,” said Mrs Gray .

“There are scenes in the film of an extraordinary meeting between councillors and the local community about the closure of the school.

“Concern is etched deeply on the faces of local people, who know the school is the heart of the community.”

Pip Koppel, the director’s mother, said in the film: “Once you abandon this building, which is the core and centre of the community, you lose the community. The community is here.”

Since the filming, the community has been awarded a number of short-term leases from Ceredigion council to continue running the building as a community centre but now it wants to buy it to secure its future.

“Losing the school would be a direct threat to our community,” said Jane Guest, chairman of the Trefeurig Development Group.

“We have used the school for dozens of community activities including tai chi, IT classes, agricultural shows, birthday parties, twmpaths, community meals, band practice, New Year’s Eve celebrations, and even carol services.

“We have had a good attendance from community members of all ages, Welsh and English-speaking alike. We are really keen to protect what we have, maintain our existing calendar of activities and expand it further, so we are determined to raise the money to buy it ourselves.”

Mrs Guest said fundraisers were determined the old school would not become yet another home renovation project for a developer.

“We know this is happening everywhere – the old school becomes just another private house in a village alongside the old chapel, the old post office, the old vicarage, the old bakery, and old pubs, but we don’t want it to happen here,” she said.

“Trefeurig is very special and worth preserving. It has the kind of ‘Big Society’ community that policymakers and development workers are struggling to create in other places.